Instead of taking them to be examples of the particular qua local, I read the contradiction between these two sets of images, and their attendant list of binaries, as evidence that what we need is a new reading of the postsocialist transition and EU accession. Two metaphors have been helpful in understanding these processes. Both have been productive but also selective in terms of what type of analysis they made possible. One is the metaphor of tabula rasa, the other is “fuzziness.”
Early observers of the postsocialist transition noted that the attendant transformations—democratization, privatization, marketization, Europeanization—did not take place on a tabula rasa.11 What they meant to convey by invoking the blank slate metaphor is, first, that building a new type of society does not take place in a vacuum, nor can it commence from scratch; people of the future are people of the past, and short of brainwashing them, you will have to build democracy not with the people you want but with the people you have. Not only can one not just purge everything in the course of transition itself, but the local social and cultural conditions will also affect the emerging nature of capitalism and democracy. These arguments were developed and demonstrated in dozens of brilliant studies of land reform, labor relations, and civil society conducted in all the formerly socialist countries.
Perhaps the most paradigmatic concept is Katherine Verdery’s (1999, 2004) term “fuzzy property.” In analyzing land restitution and privatization in postsocialist Romania, this brilliant and influential anthropologist has shown that private property cannot emerge as a fully formed legal concept that captures reality in unambiguous terms. The practical tasks of what is called privatization often seem insurmountable, and in order to manage day-to-day reality, compromises and temporary solutions have to be made, with the result that property boundaries become blurry and the identities of the owners themselves are also obfuscated. Most social scientists have stopped at documenting the difficulty of imposing markets and democracy, but a few have seen such problems and even chaos as signs of resistance, with the suggestion—more often implicit than explicit—that one cannot prejudge the outcome of postsocialist transitions and that such transitions—especially because they are more imposed than homegrown—will generate new conflicts and inequalities that advisors to the new regimes ignored or promised to be short-lived.
These studies were path-breaking and have not only contributed tremendously to our understanding of this “Great Transformation,” but have also laid the foundation of what is now a legitimate and respected interdisciplinary research field, postsocialist studies.12 Standing on the shoulders of such giants, it is now possible to see a new horizon for this scholarship, one that re-examines and complicates the global-local and universal-particular matrix. Let me explain why this is necessary, starting with the metaphor of the tabula rasa.
The image the concept of a blank slate conjures up is one of painting or writing on a clean, white surface. Certainly the end of state socialism and the subsequent entry into the European Union were radical and swift enough to be compared to “painting over” the old regime, and social scientists studying eastern Europe were correct to question how clean that slate could really be wiped. The previous writing or picture showing through—as if in an Etch A Sketch toy—were primarily seen as obstacles preventing the imposed new writing or painting from appearing clear and legible. They made the new picture fuzzy.
This fuzziness, however, does other work besides serving as an impediment. To understand this we may want to reach to another metaphor, one that recognizes that the transition and transformation in postsocialist countries were never intended to replace old with new in a static fashion, but to lift the old and move it in the same direction as the new. The slate image suggests stasis; once it is covered with the new writing or painting it stays so. In contrast, when a country joins the “free world” or the EU it acquires a new direction, a new type of movement, a new mode of change. In fact, movement—in this context most call it progress—is expected and is the stated reason for the change. So a metaphor that implies movement might be more useful for our purposes. I suggest we think of driving a car. In order for a car to be able to move there has to be friction: the asphalt should have a sufficiently rough surface and the tires should have deep enough grooves for movement to occur. Smooth surfaces—think of icy highways—only result in slipperiness, and the car will not be able to move, certainly not in the desired direction. Going back to the slate metaphor, it is not just that you cannot wipe the slate completely clean ever, as postsocialist studies suggested, but that it is not desirable to do so. Some previous writing must show through or some surface friction must remain for “progress” to occur. At the same time, too rough a surface will present greater resistance to movement. The conundrum of EU integration is not whether there should be an attempt to wipe the slate clean—to eliminate everything old—but how much of the previous writing should remain, or, in the new metaphor, how rough the old surface should be for (the right type of) movement to occur.
An example will help illustrate this. In my previous research on industrial waste, I argued that to the extent that the EU’s waste policies prioritized reuse and recycling, they could have “latched onto” Hungary’s socialist-era waste collection and recycling infrastructure and policies. Instead, to fulfill other EU accession requirements laid down in the Copenhagen Criteria, such policies and infrastructure were seen as state intervention in the economy and, as such, something that interferes with markets and private property. So all such policies and practices had to go. After more than a decade of a veritable free-for-all for waste generators—whether in industry or households—it was now much more difficult to reintroduce a modicum of material conservation, which now had to be implemented within a ten-to-fifteen-year derogation period after accession. This is one case in which allowing the previous “writing” or “picture” to stay, or—to use my newer metaphor—not polishing down the old surface completely, would have allowed not only a smoother transition to the EU’s waste prevention and sustainability policy paradigm, but would have eliminated the damage caused by an interim with neither old nor new regulation. It is in cases such as this that Kristin Ghodsee’s (2011) use of another metaphor for the postsocialist transition makes a lot of sense. Quoting her research subjects, she likens the radical transformations in post-1989 Bulgaria to a situation in which one demolishes one’s old house before finishing construction on the new one, thus leaving one figuratively, if not literally, homeless.
Indeed, the pictures in the Romanian slideshow in particular demonstrate not so much fuzziness or old pictures showing through, but friction, lack of movement, and dysfunction resulting from incongruity. The same is true for my three cases. The balconies cannot be fully used because of the lamppost poking through their floors (which also creates a safety issue); the newly paved sidewalk cannot be walked on; and the slide ending in the dumpster is not useable as play equipment nor can it fit in the dumpster fully, preventing its functioning both as value and waste.
My use of the metaphor of friction adapts Anna Tsing’s (2005) image to a new context. She uses “friction” to show that, far from being a smooth movement of people, money, knowledge, and goods, globalization—like any movement, according to physics—requires a certain resistance of the surfaces and entities brought into contact. Such interactions are productive, not just in the sense that they provide traction for things on the move, but also in the sense that it is from such awkward encounters that culture is generated. Friction is also unpredictable: in one case it may end up providing the much-necessary traction, a surface for something slippery to hold onto; at other times, as Tsing says, it can inspire insurrection, so that the physical concept of resistance manifests in actual social resistance.
Tsing faithfully references the physics of friction, and her research does attend to nature and materiality. Yet her examples of friction are drawn mostly from the realm of culture, knowledge, and identity,